Top-Toy Declared Bankrupt

Denmark
Top-Toy, the company operating toy chains BR and Toys ‘R’ Us in the Nordics, has been declared bankrupt based on a bankruptcy petition submitted by the board. This is due to a highly disappointing Christmas sales, which means that the company cannot continue the planned restructuring.

“We have come a long way and we had our restructuring plan approved by the creditors and the court. We have worked around the clock to set up a framework for the restructuring of TOP-TOY, but, unfortunately, today we have had to realise that we are no longer able to continue the restructuring due to a disappointing Christmas sales,” says CEO Per Sigvardsson.

On 30 November, Top-Toy filed for reconstruction and on 21 December, the restructuring plan for a new and healthy Top-Toy was approved. Part of the plan has been for the administrators to look at all possible options including a divestment of certain parts of the business, but no solution has been found.

The bankruptcy petition means that the management of Top-Toy has today been taken over by a number of trustees. They have now been tasked with selling off as many assets as possible.

“We will today initiate discussions with the creditors on how to handle the bankruptcy estate. We can, however, advise that some stores will remain open for customers to be able to exchange their purchases to other products in these stores until end December,” says attorney Søren Aamann Jensen from Kromann Reumert, who has been appointed trustee together with attorney John Sommer Schmidt from Gorissen Federspiel.

The reason for the critical situation at Top-Toy is increased digitisation, a higher number of competitors and changing play habits among children.

In the most recent financial year, Top-Toy posted operational losses of MDKK 149 million and had to write down the company’s goodwill as a consequence of the reconstruction. This meant that the company ended up posting losses of DKK 2.031 billion.